UK unemployment total falls (April)

Masomnia

Gen, you're a month behind

June 2014

These ones are even better. Apart from the wages thing.

So they're saying bonuses were being deferred to next (this) tax year? Any particular benefit to doing that? Higher personal allowance?

Generali

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Apologies for mentioning the wage thing. Everything is awesome.

I'm wondering where the number comes from because it doesn't seem to be in the ONS release unless I'm missing something.

If you look at the data, everything is within a 2 standard deviations of awesome.

Generali

Masomnia wrote: »

Gen, you're a month behind

June 2014

These ones are even better. Apart from the wages thing.

So they're saying bonuses were being deferred to next (this) tax year? Any particular benefit to doing that? Higher personal allowance?

My bad. I blindly followed the link from the BBC.

The unemployment figures are amazing, frankly.

cells

VS 6 months ago there are 0.5million more in work and unemployment has fallen from 7.4% to 6.6%

Looking forward if this rate continues then in a years time 1 million jobs could be added and unemployment fall towards 5%.

These 1 million jobs will be meet qith about 130k new homes.....no wondwr hpi is strong and will likely get stronger

wotsthat

Generali wrote: »

Not sure where the pay figure comes from because the ONS release states the following:

Pay including bonuses for employees in Great Britain for January to March 2014 was 1.7% higher than a year earlier, with pay excluding bonuses 1.3% higher.

More employees than you would imagine get bonuses. I have had bonuses whilst working as a waiter and a shop assistant (not tips but bonuses relating to turnover or hitting targets).

Don't worry when next months pay data is out we'll be reminded that they include deferred bonuses I'm sure.

That's a quote from May's release BTW..

June 2014 - Pay including bonuses for employees in Great Britain for February to April 2014 was 0.7% higher than a year earlier, with pay excluding bonuses 0.9% higher.

May 2014 - Pay including bonuses for employees in Great Britain for January to March 2014 was 1.7% higher than a year earlier, with pay excluding bonuses 1.3% higher.

George Osborne must be strutting about like the !!!! of the North.

kabayiri

Given all of this, isn't it time to kick the Work Program into touch?

Remember that this is a multi-billion pound program, with spending in tranches in the hundreds of millions of pounds.

...and a success rate less than 5%. That's almost the level of noise if you ask me.

I had opportunity to look at a lot of the data in detail last year as part of a work assignment. It did seem like those who found work were the type of people likely to go find work by themselves - they didn't need an adviser in an office to tell them to go look in newsagent and pub windows for job ads.

We would be better off incentivising businesses by supporting them to find new markets.

wotsthat

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Apologies for mentioning the wage thing. Everything is awesome.

I CBA to see how the wage figures are calculated but I can't help thinking that the 347,000 people that are no longer unemployed compared to this time last year increased their income by somewhat more than 0.7%.

Wonder what they'll want to spend their increased wealth on?

Generali

wotsthat wrote: »

Don't worry when next months pay data is out we'll be reminded that they include deferred bonuses I'm sure.

That's a quote from May's release BTW..

June 2014 - Pay including bonuses for employees in Great Britain for February to April 2014 was 0.7% higher than a year earlier, with pay excluding bonuses 0.9% higher.

May 2014 - Pay including bonuses for employees in Great Britain for January to March 2014 was 1.7% higher than a year earlier, with pay excluding bonuses 1.3% higher.

George Osborne must be strutting about like the !!!! of the North.

I suspect we cross posted. I followed a link from the BBC and didn't check the header. D'oh.

It's certainly very good news for the British as well as being very good news for the Tories. As Bill Clinton once repeatedly said, "It's the economy, stupid!"

cells

Also if I remember correctly the state payroll was 6 million pre recession

since then the population has gone up by some 3 milloon people yet public sector workers have shrunk to 5.4 million

In real terms more than 10% of them have been let go yet the country has not collapsed. In fact it must have been a lot more let go in some areas as I suspect for instance the NHS workforce has not shrunk.

Generali

cells wrote: »

Also if I remember correctly the state payroll was 6 million pre recession

since then the population has gone up by some 3 milloon people yet public sector workers have shrunk to 5.4 million

In real terms more than 10% of them have been let go yet the country has not collapsed. In fact it must have been a lot more let go in some areas as I suspect for instance the NHS workforce has not shrunk.

IIRC, many posters were claiming that reducing the public payroll would result in a catastrophic rise in unemployment. The reality has been that as public sector employment has fallen, private sector employment has risen pretty much every single month by more than enough to soak up the unemployed public former-employees.